Traveling is hard. When I was younger (it’s scary I even wrote that phrase) I always dreamed of being able to travel and see the world! Well, God gave me my wish and while I appreciate the travel, it has proven to be really challenging. As of writing this post I just crossed 90,000 air miles for the year and I still have six major trips left.

As I consider how I’ve survived this year, I’ve been surprised to find that there are seasons where I feel like I am incredibly productive. Then, there are seasons where I am surprised I can even keep up and remember to jump on a flight. After evaluating my productive seasons, I found the following principles crucial in my ability to accomplish everything I need to with excellence.

Rest and Reward:

Get the right amount of rest that your body needs. Train yourself to sleep at the right time so that when you have to wake up, you do so refreshed. For me, I’ve found that I need at least 8 hours of sleep. I’ve also found that TV, iPad, and my computer are serious distractions to getting the rest that I need. My iPad may be the biggest culprit. I love reading on it, but it’s only a click of a button to get to my ESPN Fantasy team or start researching on food places for the next trip I have, or get to that last email quickly. I didn’t want to give up reading, and I didn’t want a print book, so instead I was able to pick up the Amazon Voyager. Its amazing and has a simple function, to let you read. The benefit of rest is priceless. It allows your mind to be sharp and for you to be more effective in thought process.

Be Smart With Technology:

As I mentioned earlier, technology can’t always be assumed as helpful. However, when used thoughtfully and with intention it can be a game changer in how productive you are. There are so many apps, tools, and resources that I use, but the ones that I always go to are:

• Evernote – Its the best. If your not using it, your missing out. It serves as my digital brain and stores everything I need. Recently I purchased the premium version and I love it!
• Wunderlist – Its a simple task list app that syncs across all your devices. Its not overly complicated and works seamlessly across all my devices.
• All Apple – I drank the Koolade, and I love it. Seriously, all my devices are apple. My wife even got me an apple watch and I have grown found of it. However, if you are on the other side, seriously consider the devices that you have. Do they all play well together? Do the research and ensure that they do, its a world of difference
• Kindle Voyager – For distraction free reading, its amazing. I have found that I can actually read longer staring at the screen and I don’t get a headache.

Dig Deeper Into The Word:

This is honestly one of the most overlooked disciplines in my life.

My passionate pursuit of the Word of God sets the stage for everything else in life @Muddamalle
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Have Fun:

Seriously, have fun. Make sure you carve out time to enjoy life. Whether that’s playing sports, watching a movie, or taking a walk; do it. Life gets busy and we have a lot to do but neglecting what makes us happy and refreshes us is a huge mistake!

The post 4 Ways To Stay Productive While Traveling appeared first on Joel's Travels.

I was on a flight from Virginia back home to Seattle recently and the person next to me asked me what time it was. I went to my phone and told them the time. They looked at me puzzled and said, “why look at your phone when you are wearing a watch?”.

My watch being the wrong time when I travel is the best thing for me because it helps me keep my priorities. So why don’t I change my watch when I land in a different state? It’s pretty simple. I always want to know what time it is at home. My watch is a simple and easy reminder that what is most important to me is in a different state. Every time I look at my watch I am reminded to think about and pray for my wife and kids. When people ask me why my watch is wrong and I don’t change it, I can tell them about my family and whats most important to me.

On a practical note, it allows me to be aware of my families schedule. When I travel I am usually caught up in the conference schedule. But having my watch I am able to tell when my kids are getting ready to go down for a nap or when they are getting ready to go to bed. I can catch them before meals or join them via FaceTime for breakfast. I found early on that if I didn’t have these types of built in reminders the day could get away from me. The business of travel and conferences combined with my families own schedule often had us at odd’s for touching base and talking. This simple method keeps me connected to my family.

Why is it important to stay connected?

1. The traveling life has the ability to sap you of your time and energy quickly.

While it was fun traveling to different states early on, the cost on my family began to show itself. Like everything in life that is important, we need to put checks and balances into place to keep them important. I’ve had the opportunity to sit next to some executives of large companies. Most of these people are world travelers and like me, feel like they live on the road. Interestingly, many of them have broken families and all of them at some point in the conversation tell me to keep tabs on the work, travel, family balance.

2. It sets a precedent for my kids.

When they get older and start their own careers they will be influenced heavily by what they see in me and their mom. Everyone of our actions affects our kids. The way we dress, talk, interact with others, and our work habits. By making my family a priority and putting these practices into place my kids will grow up understanding that this is important for their own work and family life.

3. It reminds me of what is important.

I do my work for a variety of reasons. But most important is to provide for my family. If I slip away and begin to get disconnected from my family because of work, that seems a bit counterproductive. Staying connected and putting these practices into place keeps a healthy balance and sets the priorities in my life.

Regardless of if you travel across the world for work or have a 30 minute commute into the office make sure you do everything in your power to keep your family as a priority.

The post How My Watch Keeps My Priorities Straight appeared first on Joel's Travels.

When Brittany and I first got married we always wondered who would be the tough parent and the easy parent. I quickly stated that I would be tough.

Moment of honesty:

I don’t like kids. It’s actually true. I’ve never been a kid person. That’s why I’ve always gravitated towards youth ministry and working with high school and college age students rather than little kids.

Hubris:

This experience lead me to believe that I would be immune to the charm, whinny voice, and utter smooth moves from these little creatures we call kids. Then I became a dad. Quickly it became evident that I was not the stoic father that was immune to childish charm. In fact, when it came to my first born, Liam, I fell pray to his wide eyed smile, cry, and whine almost every time. Brittany became the tough “cant get anything past me” mom. Then my second son Levi came. He has a different kind of charm. The kind where he does something incredibly naughty, looks at you in the face, smiles, and in a raspy voice says, love you daddy da. It gets me every time. My third son Lucas is only 4 months old. He already has the half smile with dimple smile down.

Traveling Life:

Then our lives took a twist. I transitioned into a new role at work where I spend a considerable more time traveling across the US and sometimes the world to present, speak, and teach workshops at conferences. One side affect I never considered would be how this impacted my desire to discipline my boys. I found myself on the road for 2-4 days at a time. When I came home my first thoughts were not about consistency in parenting or the 3-4 things Brittany had been working on the boys with. It was hugging, kissing, and playing with my boys. Even further, the simple thought of disciplining the boys was hard enough, I couldn’t really bring myself to do it. I became the dad who gave the “last warnings” and “second and ONLY chances”.

I quickly realized (Brittany helped a lot with this!) that my travel schedule was not an excuse for me not being present or active in the discipline of our children. In fact, my sons need discipline from their father. Proverbs 23 has it right, children should listen to their fathers instructions. The only way children can listen to their fathers instructions are if fathers are actually giving instruction!

Ways to be present in the discipline of my kids:

Here are a few ways I have tried to provide some course correction:

• Stay in the loop while I am away – Its easy to talk about surface level things with Brittany and the boys while I’m away. The best thing I can do is be intentional about what is happening in the lives of my kids and asking my wife how things are going with them. My wife serves as the window into everyday life when I’m gone. Our ability to communicate well is incredibly helpful as I stay in the loop on the wins and challenges at home.
• Engage in conversation with kids – While I’m away I want to discuss and talk about what has been going one during that day. I want to talk about what happened when Liam got in trouble for hitting his brother. Even though I am in a different state I want my sons to know that daddy is still present and cares about what they are doing. This type of daily recap and recollection is not only helpful for me, but also for my kids to consider the events of the day.
• Take your kids on dates – I give myself the freedom to have either a fun day. Basically, daddy takes the kids out to have fun. Typically, this just means we order pizza, have sword fights, throw the football around, or go to the park. Being able to just have fun with the kids gives me a release and is helpful as I step back into day to day dad living.

My kids need me to be their dad in all areas of their lives. @Muddamalle
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I’ve seen the disaster of parents that are physically or emotionally unavailable. It creates lasting challenges for their kids. The benefits of being godly and attentive parents are countless, and we will see those benefits played out as our kids become spouses and parents themselves one day.

**

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Related Posts:

• Four Ways To Stay Married With a Crazy Travel Schedule
•  Staying Dad While Traveling
• Being Road Sick

The post The Traveling Dad: The Challenge of Discipline appeared first on Joel's Travels.

I’m always on the look out for new tools and tips to make my travel life easier. I never realized how important it would be to make travel efficient until I started traveling for a living. Here are three travel tips/tricks that will help you regardless if you are a frequent traveler or travel by necessity to visit family, friends, or vacation.

1. Trip It – This app has become a lifesaver for me. Simply create an account and store all your travel details hear. When you get confirmation emails for flight, hotel, and rental car, forward them to your trip it email. The trip it app automatically creates your itinerary and keeps all your travel info in a central location. I love the fact that I can quickly see what hotel I’m at when I land and launch the directions to get there directly from the Trip it app.
2. Flight Track – This app has saved me from some close calls. I first got it when it was the free app of the week at Starbucks. Simply type in your flight number and Flight Track will get you all the info you need about your flight from gate information to travel time and probability of a delay or cancelation. This app becomes priceless when I’m delayed and land with a short connect time. In some cases the gate changes for the connecting flight. Instead of wasting valuable minutes staring at a blue screen looking for the right gate, the flight track app lets you know what gate you arrived and updates to the minute the gate that you leave for your connecting flight, leaving you more minutes to run terminal to terminal.
3. Cam Scanner – My favorite scanning app. I tend to pile up receipts. Cam Scanner lets you create a document or folder where you can add multiple scanned images. Perfect for keeping all my documents, receipts, and information categorized by the conference or event I’m at. Even better, it allows you to upload that folder to your Evernote app. Brilliant!

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Related Posts:

• Being Road Sick
• Staying Dad While Traveling
• 4 Ways To Stay Married With A Crazy Travel Schedule

The post 3 Ways To Make Travel Easy appeared first on Joel's Travels.

HONESTY:

1. Wake up at 3am to catch a shuttle to Seattle (2.5 hour shuttle ride).
2. Catch a flight from Seattle to (name the location).
3. Land and grab a rental car
4. Drive to the hotel and check in
5. Head to the conference venue to set up and test audio and video
6. During the conference I am up at 6:30am and back to the hotel (as I was writing this I actually called the hotel “home” thats how bad it is!). I repeat this while I am at the conference and have to find some time to grab some food.
7. Drop off the rental car, catch a flight, catch a shuttle, and get home usually around 11pm.

MY LITTLE SECRET:

REALITY:

The post Being Road Sick appeared first on Joel's Travels.

This last year I have done over 120,000 miles of air travel. I still have a couple more months so the 150,000 mile is still a real possibility with a trip to London coming up for the Worship Central Conference. As some of you are reading this there are typically two thoughts based on your context.

1. The single person thinks – Thats amazing! I wish I could travel like that!
2. The married person thinks – God bless his wife. If my spouse traveled like that there would be some serious problems!

For the single person, it is pretty awesome, at least for the first 20,000 miles. Then the repetition of airport, rental car, hotel, conference venue and repeat gets real old, real fast. However, if you want to experience it yourself, Faithlife is hiring!

For the married person, you’re right. My wife is amazing. She shows an incredible amount of grace and understanding. Beyond that however, is an intentionality to stay connected spiritually and emotionally while I am away. Here are four ways we go about this. If you travel as much as I do or are in a situation where travel may be a reality, I hope this helps you.

Bring visibility to your travel schedule:

Brittany and I have a shared calendar. She knows every trip that is on my calendar. She is able to help me stay accountable in the amount of time I am away. She also is able to see that I may have a long travel stretch in front of me, but there is a good week or two week slot that I have blocked off for family. Maybe even more important, make sure that your blocked of time for your family is actually for your family. No more of the “Babe, just one more email”. Your wife and kids experience half hearted commitments that fall through everyday. Don’t let your commitment to spend time with them be one of those experiences. The shared calendar also helps my wife  to set her expectations while keeping me accountable to my schedule. This also allows for open communication about travel and the impact it is having on her and the boys.

Stay connected to the Word :

We do our best to do shared Bible reading plans together when I am gone. We both have the Faithlife Study Bible App and Logos Bible Software, so we will typical pick a specific reading plan and read through that sharing thoughts via community notes. This engages our minds with the beauty of scripture. As we focus on and delve into the depth of the Word, we are connected in the most meaningful way possible.

Leverage technology to increase your ability to communicate:

Traveling is crazy. Over the last month there have been a ridiculous amounts of cancellations and delays. This makes it hard to jump on the phone to talk to my wife as I am running to the opposite side of the airport to catch a connecting flight. However, I can text her and let her know what is happening. I love the new iOS update that has built in voice memos. Britt and I use this all the time to stay connected on the little things. This way she knows what my day looks like and I can stay connected with whats happening on the home front. Things like FaceTime and Skype are game changers. We try to always FaceTime at night with the kids before they go to bed if possible.

Extend grace:

The most important thing is be gracious to each other. The reality is that I have screwed up more times than I can count. I forget to text or FaceTime. I get preoccupied with my travel woes or the stress of a conference and neglect my reading plans or speaking to my wife. This is where grace plays a crucial role.

In truth, these are things that are helpful if you have a crazy travel schedule or not. Finally, there is an extra level of responsibility for husbands to lead their families well. I love Ephesians 5:25-29 because we see clearly that the responsibility and great privilege of the husband is in cleansing his wife with the washing of the Word. Marriage is an incredible gift of God.

What are some things that you do to ensure a healthy marriage? Let me know in the comments section below!

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